This post is for our fellow engineers & founders doing GTM / sales.

I used to think doing enrichment was for big companies with massive outboundsales functions.

Before launching Val Town for Teams (coming this week!), we set a goal: find 10pre‑sales customers. All of a sudden, I was spending all my time looking forteams who could be the right fit.

Our best channel was obviously new users signing up for Val Town. However,scrolling through emails and hoping we recognize someone quickly becameunsustainable. (And really it only works forcelebrities anyways.)

Clearbit vs Clay vs Val Town

Clearbit used to be the obvious answer, but post‑HubSpot acquisition, it's nolonger an option for small new customers.

Clay is great, but we wanted to use it like an API so anyone on our team coulduse it programatically, without Clay knowledge or set-up.

We asked on X, the CEO explained how we could do it.

Introducing: Clay API Proxy

We turned Clay into an API / SDK on Val Town via ourClay API Proxy.

The hard part was that Clay enrichments are triggered by one webhook, but youget the results from another webhook. We wanted the developer experience to be asingle request that gets back the enriched data as the response.

Here's how we built it:

Your val imports and calls our clay() "sdk" function with an email orGitHub usernameOur proxy authenticates you as a Val Town userWe generate a request id, and forward the payload to Clay with that idClay enriches, and POSTs the result back using the id. We save the result toSQLite.While your original request is still open, we poll sqlite for it.When it returns, we give you the JSON back in the normal request/responsepattern.

Enriching emails with Clay is now as simple as:

import { clay } from "https://esm.town/v/charmaine/clay-proxy/sdk.ts";const result = await clay({  email: "steve@val.town",  source: "user_signup",});console.log(result);

Which returns:

{  "email": "steve@val.town",  "person": "Steve Krouse",  "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevekrouse",  "company": "Val Town",  "funding": "Seed round",  "totalFunding": "$7 million",  "employeeCount": "6"}

How this helps

User enrichment is a big part of how we successfully found our first 10pre-sales customers.

Our users are no longer a long list of anonymous emails. We are able to moreefficiently spend our time interacting with ourICP (Ideal Customer Profile)as soon as they sign up, instead of combing through endless dashboards in searchof a unicorn.

We see new users joining in real-time, with their enriched profilesAnyone can start a thread, tag the right person, or notify everyone else thatthey've already reached out. For example:Warm intros were easy to trackThe team then starts building intuition about: how many new users joined, arewe attracting ICP, who owns follow‑ups etc.

Then what?

Once you have this data on Val Town, there's lots you can do.

Here are some templates:

We've been loving these experiments, and would love to help more engineers scalethe traditional GTM function.

Pricing

Clay credits aren't free, so we can't let just anyone use our proxy. We'veallowlisted a couple of friendswho we know are good for it, and can bill them later. If you wanted to getstarted, shoot me an email at charmaine@val.town and I'll personally help youget set up.

We also havea self-hosted alternative, ifyou'd like to create an API for your own Clay account.